0000000000790205
AUTHOR
Ettore Appella
Epigenetic siRNA and Chemical Screens Identify SETD8 Inhibition as a Therapeutic Strategy for p53 Activation in High-Risk Neuroblastoma
Given the paucity of druggable mutations in high-risk neuroblastoma (NB), we undertook chromatin-focused small interfering RNA and chemical screens to uncover epigenetic regulators critical for the differentiation block in high-risk NB. High-content Opera imaging identified 53 genes whose loss of expression led to a decrease in NB cell proliferation and 16 also induced differentiation. From these, the secondary chemical screen identified SETD8, the H4K20me1 methyltransferase, as a druggable NB target. Functional studies revealed that SETD8 ablation rescued the pro-apoptotic and cell-cycle arrest functions of p53 by decreasing p53K382me1, leading to activation of the p53 canonical pathway. I…
The Ability of Variant Peptides to Reverse the Nonresponsiveness of T Lymphocytes to the Wild-Type Sequence p53264–272 Epitope
Abstract Recently, we observed that CTL specific for the wild-type (wt) sequence p53264–272 peptide could only be expanded ex vivo from PBMC of a subset of the HLA-A2.1+ normal donors or cancer patients tested. Surprisingly, the tumors of the responsive patients expressed normal levels of wt p53 and could be considered unlikely to present this epitope. In contrast, tumors of nonresponsive patients accumulated mutant p53 and were more likely to present this epitope. We sought to increase the responsive rate to the wt p53264–272 peptide of PBMC obtained from normal donors and patients by identifying more immunogenic variants of this peptide. Two such variants were generated by amino acid exch…